


Axiology

by rodabonor



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Holding Hands, Homophobia, M/M, Nazi killing, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Xenophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 20:41:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14172978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rodabonor/pseuds/rodabonor
Summary: Hannibal stepped back and got the tape while Will picked out his knife from his pocket, advancing slowly."I’m not even a fucking Nazi,” the man said, sounding far less confident now. “There’s nothing in our program suggesting—""I don’t care what fancy word you want to use,” Will pointed the knife at him. "A Nazi’s a Nazi."Will and Hannibal kill a neo-Nazi in Sweden. Hannibal feels conflicted about it.





	Axiology

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on tumblr months ago and realized just now that I forgot to post it here. Originally written for the lovely and talented [Pragnificent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PragmaticHominid) who asked for a fic where Hannibal and Will kill neo-Nazis.

It had been a deliberate assertion on Hannibal’s part. Of that much, Will was certain.

They were making their way through Sweden, and while making a stop in a small town up north, they noticed an odd-looking man standing outside of a mall, one hand behind his steel rod back and a large green banner in the other. He was wearing a white shirt and black slacks, and looking around, Will could see a number of men in the same outfit circling the area. Some of them carried cellphones that they both, in retrospect, should have been more suspicious of. 

Hannibal spared none of them so much as a glance, but when they passed the man with the banner, his hand slipped into Will’s and squeezed. The man’s gaze snapped toward them and one of the phones were immediately directed at them. 

Will wasn’t familiar at all with Swedish and had no clue whether Hannibal had any knowledge of Nordic languages, but when the man started talking while letting the phone follow their movements, Will caught Hannibal’s gaze and found his concern mirrored. Hannibal remained perfectly composed as usual, holding his hand in a firm grip as they kept walking.

*

“The banner belongs to a far-right movement,” Hannibal said, tapping on his tablet. “Neo-Nazis, specifically. It appears there is an LGBT event in town and they have gathered to oppose it. Their website contains videos of similar events, where they have filmed participants.”

Will glanced at the screen, where there was shaky footage of two young women with pink and purple hair holding hands while the man behind the camera talked, presumably addressing the viewers rather than the women he was filming.

“Why? I mean, what’s he saying?”

“Unkind things,” Hannibal said, pausing the video. “I assume it’s partly to ridicule, partly to get a message across.”

Will worried his lip between his teeth. “They totally filmed us.”

“I doubt it’s very compromising. It’s a rather obscure website.”

“Still. We should do something before they post it.”

It took no more than a few taps and swipes before they found the familiar face of the man holding the phone on Facebook. His name wasn’t even altered, judging by the fact that an address and other personal information could be found tied to it. He looked young – something about the hair slicked back from his face, drawing attention to his large, kind eyes, but every source they came across stated he was in his thirties. And everything he shared on his social media accounts opposed the idea that he was kind.

“We should hurry. Who knows when they’ll post it,” Will said. “You think they’re still out?”

“We can find out.”

“What do we do when we find out?”

“We ask, politely, that they remove the video.”

*

Asking politely turned out to be an unsuccessful approach. They made sure to walk up to the man with the cellphone when he was alone waiting for a bus, far away from his friends. When the man only shook his head and told them he didn’t know what they were talking about, they fixed each other with a look and proceeded to trail the bus with their car.

Once the man unlocked the door to his dark, seemingly empty apartment, Hannibal crept up behind him and knocked his head against the brick of the building, hard enough that he fell to the ground, hands cradled around his skull. Hannibal snatched up his phone and pocketed it.

“I wonder what he said when he filmed us,” Will mused aloud.

“I would rather not find out.”

The man groaned, blinking as though he was confused. His hand started searching the ground, and Will caught the moment it started moving where his pocket was. Before he could spring into action, Hannibal stepped down on his hand.

“I wouldn’t,” Hannibal cautioned, digging the sole of his shoe into the meat of his hand until he cried out. The man’s eyes lit up with recognition as he looked up at him, then there was a conflicted mixture of anger, amusement and fear on his face.

“Would you prefer to hold it, maybe?” he sneered. “You just stole my phone and assaulted me. I could report you.”

He tried to get up, and Will stomped down on his chest so forcibly that his head knocked against the ground again. He cried out and hissed a short, angry word, presumably a curse. When he tried to get up a second time, Will dragged him up, wrenched his arm behind his back and forced him face down against the pavement, placing a knee on his back to lock him in place.

“You really want to know what I said in the video?” The man ground out. There was blood in his sandy hair and behind the layers of anger and fear and seething hatred, his eyes held a look of disgust. “I said you two should serve as a reminder why the country needs to be closed to outside influences. We don’t want no homophile foreigners dragging the perverse decadence of the upper classes into our honest, hard-working communities.”

“How risky would it be for us to just kill this fucker right now?” Will asked Hannibal. He didn’t know he would be so badly affected by what came out of the man’s mouth, but he was. He could feel his jaws tensing as anger thrummed alive beneath his skin.

Hannibal opened the door to the apartment with his sleeve, glancing inside.

“If we leave tonight, I suppose it’s a risk we could hazard,” he said, gesturing for Will to come inside.

*

Somewhere between being dragged into his own apartment and strapped down into a chair with a roll of duct tape, the man started acting appropriately scared.

“Poetic justice is tempting,” Hannibal said, tone conversational. “But I’m afraid the destruction the Nazi regime caused is far too extensive to be applied to a single victim.”

Fear made the man quiet. Will liked that, simply because there was satisfaction to the idea of them having a humbling effect on him. He watched as Hannibal stalked closer, putting his hands on the armrests of the chair.

“It has been said that the Nazis utilized the prisoners kept at the concentration camps for everyday items. Soaps made of fat, hair used as pillow stuffing.” Hannibal leaned closer to the man’s face, effortlessly imposing. “I will have you know that I’m quite crafty myself.”

“There’s an idea,” Will said, though he knew Hannibal was merely trying to intimidate him. They didn’t have time for anything elaborate. “There would be some use for you then, wouldn’t it? Nazi piece of shit.”

“Fuck you,” The words shuddered out of him, but his eyes still held an edge that Will wanted to whittle away at. He shot Hannibal a look.

“Get the duct tape. I don’t want him waking up the neighbors once we start.”

Hannibal stepped back and got the tape while Will picked out his knife from his pocket, advancing slowly.

“I’m not even a fucking Nazi,” the man said, sounding far less confident now. “There’s nothing in our program suggesting—”

“I don’t care what fancy word you want to use,” Will pointed the knife at him. “A Nazi’s a Nazi. You would show your face in public, real name listed everywhere, like you expect no consequences to your actions. Like you’re a predator in a world full of prey, when violent politics spawn violent resistance. What the fuck made you think you’re entitled to safety when you want nothing but to make the world unsafe for everyone that isn’t like you?”

The man tried to jerk away from his restraints, eyes gaining a bright, fevered sheen Will recognized as panic. Hannibal placed a long strip of tape over his mouth, wrapping it all the way around his head for good measure. Satisfied with the tableau, Will tightened his grip on the handle of his knife and stuck it full-force through the front of the man’s pants, twisting the blade in his genitals. The symbolism of it was crude, but Will wanted to speak a language he could understand.

“You want violence, we’ll give you violence,” he said, words slightly drowned out by muffled screaming. If the man’s pants hadn’t been black, he imagined that red stains would spread like watercolor on wet paper. Now they simply looked wet, dark and glistening in the harsh white light of the room. He yanked the knife out and passed it to Hannibal, who accepted it wordlessly.

There was an odd solemnity to Hannibal’s face that Will couldn’t help but notice, a certain vacancy in his eyes that he immediately found disconcerting. It looked like he was far away – a lack of mental presence that Will didn’t recognize in him at all.

He decided to ask later, once Hannibal wasn’t wrists-deep in another man’s torso, prolonging his suffering with a cruel, almost casual efficiency that could only be acquired through years of experience.

*

“Should we have taken something from him?” Will asked from the driver’s seat once they were back in their car. It was dark now and the street lights outside spilled yellow on Hannibal’s face, lighting up the sharp angles of him and hollowing his cheeks.

“No,” Hannibal said. “It’s better we don’t leave our usual MO. We came here to throw Crawford off our scent. The last thing we want is for anyone to be able to track us.”

Will nodded. Something still felt vaguely off. He turned to look at Hannibal, searching his face for clues it refused to give.

“Are you ok?” he asked, tentatively.

A small smile softened Hannibal’s features. He didn’t quite snort, but his breath hitched. 

“Do you have any reason to believe I’m not?”

Will tried to think of a delicate way to phrase his concerns. He wanted to say that given what he knew of his childhood, being emotionally affected by what transpired between them and the man they just killed would have been understandable. But he knew it would be poorly received, and he didn’t want to go for Hannibal’s throat now that it had been bared, forcibly and unexpectedly.

“When you took my hand before,” he said instead, feeling his way through the dark. “You wanted them to see.”

“I don’t concern myself with politics.”

“Politics concern themselves with you.”

“Would you have preferred that I didn’t take your hand?”

“No. I liked it. I like that you would do that and I like that you agreed to kill him.”

Hannibal frowned and fell silent for a moment. When he next spoke, his voice held a hard edge.

“Whatever notions you are entertaining about me right now are likely false, Will. You should know by now that my decisions aren’t based on any arbitrary sense of morality.”

“No, they’re based on a specific sense of morality that ties into your personal beliefs.”

“And you figure tonight was reflective of my personal beliefs?”

“Wasn’t it?” Will chewed on the inside of his cheek. The apprehension on Hannibal’s face was clear even from the periphery of his vision. “You’re afraid this is going to make me think you’re a good person. Deep down. That’s it, isn’t it? You think I’ll get my hopes up because we killed a bad guy and it’ll make me pursue a version of you that doesn’t exist. And then we both end up disappointed.”

“Is that your prediction of the future?”

“No, it’s my estimation of your concerns, since you aren’t giving them to me straight.”

Hannibal fell silent once more. Will had set out not to kick him while he was down, yet he felt like that was exactly what he was doing.

“I find all manner of ideology alluding to national socialism distasteful,” Hannibal said, to Will’s surprise. “They are ugly people with ugly views and I would gladly see them eradicated. I held your hand because I’m not intimidated by their presence. I agreed to kill that man because he was appalling. What do you make of that?”

Will smiled a little, warmth threading through the tightness in his chest.

“I don’t need to make anything of it. I just want your honesty. For you to trust me with it.”

He reached out and took Hannibal’s hand, weaving their fingers together. There was still blood under Hannibal’s nails, a rim of maroon that made him want to scrape them clean with his teeth.

“Don’t hesitate to take my hand,” Will said, squeezing around Hannibal’s fingers for emphasis. “No matter who’s watching.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! More of my Hannigram stuff can be found on my [tumblr](http://beatricenius.tumblr.com/)


End file.
